Well, well, well, the shakeout from the election results is already yielding some fascinating information. Try this on for size, Harry Reid got 90%—that’s right 90%—of the Latino vote in Nevada, with Sharron Angle’s positions garnering just 8% of Hispanic voter support. This contributed nearly 10 points to Reid’s winning spread, overall.
Conclusion (and the GOP should hear this one, loud and clear, but won’t): You can’t run racist, scaremongering political ads and expect the targets of these ads to support your damned election! Old white people = a dying base; Latino-Americans a fast-growing one. Look what happened to former governor Pete Wilson (R) in California. His last campaign did damage to the GOP in the Golden State for a good, long time. Damage they never really recovered from and still won’t for some time.
As Dangerous Minds pal, Charles Johnson succinctly put it over at Little Green Footballs:
In this election, the Tea Party GOP made a calculation to pander to the racist and xenophobic elements of their base, and this is a glimpse of the backlash to come. The days when they can count on a racist base to put them over the top are numbered, as Latinos and other minorities make up increasingly large segments of the American population.
Angle’s concession speech was fascinating, too. Did someone slip her some Thorazine about a half hour before she took the mike?
The biggest “downside” to Angle’s loss yesterday—if there can be said to be one—it’s that she didn’t lose by a much larger percentage!